Monday, October 22, 2007

Fear of flying

By Libby

Irony too bitter to swallow. This adminstration has plied fear of terrorism 24/7 for over six years but consistently buries the reports of the dangers that really threaten us, from global warming to air safety.

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers. (emphasis added)

Purge a taxpayer funded study? As my friend Harry McColgan would say, "Are you shitting me?" They've got us standing barefoot in impossible lines waiting to be screened. They won't let us bring our shampoo or a bottle of water on the plane to prevent a terrorist attack but the we're in greater danger from normal airspace operations and unscreened cargo sitting underneath us and they don't want us to know.

It astounds me that Bush still has a 24% rating. I can't believe I know and like otherwise intelligent people who continue to support his failed policies and excuse his excesses. What's it going to take to convince them we're in more danger from our own government than we are from terrorism?